They tasted better, they lasted longer, they were more resilient and didn’t require artificial ripening. They were — simply put — a better fruit, because they belonged to a different species, or cultivar in banana parlance.

It was called Gros Michel and it remained the world’s export banana until 1965.

That year, it was declared commercially extinct due to the Panama disease, a fungal disease that started out from Central America and quickly spread to most of the world’s commercial banana plantations, leaving no other choice but to burn them down.Link to Original Source

garyoa1 writes: In what can only be described as a win for humanity, the New Zealand government today passed a new Patents Bill that effectively makes patenting software illegal. In what many are calling a major victory for innovation, the bill was passed earlier this week after more than five years of debate and intensive lobbying for multinational software vendors.

garyoa1 writes: Seems Verio, a backbone, decided... after nearly 48 hours... of flaky email to pull down everything. Been working to restore for 4 hours and counting. So if you have a Verio server... sucks being you.